What Global Public Policy and International Political Economy bring to bear in energy research – and why we need to keep them distinct

Although IPE and GPP overlap conceptionally and empirically, there is a case for keeping GPP and IPE analytically distinct. To simplify: GPP tells us why we need international regimes for energy, while IPE tells us why we only have incomplete ones. Although many scholars draw on both sets of literatures, the two approaches to the study of energy market, regulation and politics entail asking different types of questions based on distinct theories and assumptions. In their latest article, published in Policy & Society, Andreas Goldthau and Nick Sitter make three central propositions: i) in a rapidly changing world of energy scholars from both camps need to be aware of and open to insights from the other school; ii) the distinction between market-focused liberal scholars on one hand and security-oriented or realist scholars on the other is increasingly important; and iii) although IPE and GPP scholars can fruitfully accommodate insights from each others’ literature, the two approaches to the study of energy policy are best valued by their own analytical contribution – even as we grapple with new, cross-cutting issues such as the geopolitics and geo-economics of global energy transitions.